Getting Them Where They Lived

So where did they live, those ancestors of yours? The place, the particular dwelling and the district where it was found, can tell so much about their lives. But you have to get the timing right. Because places can change out of all recognition over time. What was once a fashionable address can go down in the world quickly once the movers and shakers move on.

I am reminded of how places change every day when I walk around my community which used to be full of houses and townhouses rising two stories from the ground at most. The past five years or so, condo towers have risen higher than the trees which used to seem an impressive height. The current thinking is to pull down what was there and replace it. But that is not the only way that places are altered.

Once stately homes where one family was waited on by live-in servants can be divided into flats and peopled with tenants who pay ever increasing rents. This is particularly apt to happen in cities and university towns where space is at a premium.

Space at a premium, I'm sure that would have boggled the minds of our forbears who arrived in the New World where it seemed that there was nothing by space and trees. Timing is everything.

Working on Puzzles

At one presentation I attended, the speaker talked about research showing that many genealogists enjoy doing puzzles. The similarity between doing genealogical research and finding the correct puzzle pieces when putting together a jigsaw or the right word when doing a crossword puzzle was highlighted. I was sold because I could remember doing crosswords and jigsaw puzzles back when I was a child, long before I researched my ancestors. Even today I still enjoy a good puzzle whether it is a jigsaw or a genealogical research question.

My Dad taught me how to do jigsaws the right way, by turning over every piece first, then putting together all the straight edged pieces to make the frame. So tedious! I wanted to dive right in and start putting things together right away.

When I started doing genealogy, I was also taught that there was a right way to do things. I was told to pick a few family lines and only research those. But I wanted to find out about them all, both my lines and those of my spouse at the time. I was not very good with arbitrary rules and decided to do research my own way.

It has been fun and challenging. It has also meant that I have uncovered a lot of puzzles as I progressed in my research. Besides trying to solve where in Ireland my Cavanagh line came from, I have more family research puzzles to work on as I plan for a research trip. These include plans to unravel the interconnections between  my nonconforming ancestors, the Stranges and Devonshires, and trying to find out why a Dorset branch of my family decamped to one of the Channel Islands and what happened to them there. There are no end of puzzling events when it comes to family history!

Research in Real Time

Map of Australia with the British Isles 1922

 

So, where are my staff genealogists? You know, the ones they have on genealogy programs who put everything together to wow the celebrity and show the audience the possibilities and the ease with which the research can be done. Of course, they come up with connections and interesting stories. They have the manpower and expertise and, if they don't find anything of interest, they don't feature that celebrity on their show.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, given that last comment) the only researcher trying to figure out how to get my London Cavanagh line back to Ireland is me. I have my great grandfather, Henry Cavanagh, confirmed back to the 1881 census where he was living with his wife and children at 82 Wentworth Street in Whitechapel. I can't find any of them back in the 1871 census and haven't proved which family Henry belongs to in 1861 when he would most likely have been living with his birth family. I do have a suspicion as to which family he belongs to but how to prove it?

One strategy will be to research the descendants of Henry's potential brothers and sisters to see if there are any documented connections with Henry or his family. Most of the potential siblings married and named their father as Benjamin Cavanagh, whose given professions were all in the building trade, another confirming clue that at least they all belong together. Family memories provided another clue to Henry Cavanagh's birth family. I was told that my great grandfather had a brother Ben who went to Australia to live or went to Australia and came back. There was indeed a Benjamin Cavanagh of around the right age who named his father as Benjamin Cavanagh in the building trade and it would be just typical of my family that I would have to research family links with Australia to find out more about my Irish heritage!

Image:

By Oregon State University Archives - Map of Australia and New ZealandUploaded by geagea, No restrictions,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12020265 

A Fearful Social History

Sometimes the inspiration to look through a different lens at the information on hand comes when I am not actively researching. This time I was reading the book, The Cowkeeper's Wish. At one point in the story one of the women moved to her own apartment in Whitechapel just before Jack the Ripper started his activities in the area. Her apartment was in College Buildings, a new building on Wentworth Street, and the authors pointed out how close this was to Jack's hunting area.

Until I read that, I hadn't clued in to the fact that Henry Cavanagh, my great grandfather, was living in the Ripper's hunting grounds. Henry lived on the same short street as the woman in the book. Both the 1881 and 1891 censuses show Henry Cavanagh living with his family at 82 Wentworth Street, which was adjacent to George Yard and the George Yard Buildings where the mutilated body of Martha Tabram was found on a landing inside the building.

By some accounts, Martha's killing was the first of a series of seemingly motiveless murders of women in London's Whitechapel. The deaths gradually came to be seen as the work of one killer. As the summer and fall of 1888 advanced towards winter the killings continued. The fears of those who lived in the East End were stoked by the press who, with little concrete news to relay, printed rumours which plunged many into panic and despair.

Women were particularly affected, after all, they were the target of this insane killer who seemed to claim his victims at random. Polly Nichol was the next victim (by some accounts the first Ripper victim) and she was almost the same age as Henry's wife, Charlotte. Did Charlotte dare to go out by herself after dark? What of Henry and Charlotte's two daughters, Charlotte and Ellen, both young women, both listed as paper bag makers in the 1891 census? Did they make sure to go to work together, if their work took them outside the home?

It was an uneasy time that shone a spotlight on life in the East End. Because of all that has been written about this series of murders as well as numerous movie and television renderings of this area of London in the time period, there is much information to be gleaned about the life and culture of the inhabitants of the area which my family called home. Fortunately for those who lived in Whitechapel, with the close of the year 1888 this particular series of murders appears to have come to an end but the accounts and speculation continue to this day.

Sources:

Kasaboski, Tracy & Kristen Den Hartog. The Cowkeepers’ Wish: A Genealogical Journey. Douglas & McIntyre, Madeira Park, BC, 2018

Sugden, Philip. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. Robinson Publishing Ltd, London, 1995.

Image:

By Unknown - http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/image_galleries/jack_the_ripper_gallery.shtml?5, Public Domain

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12131137